I wrote this for http://catalyzed.org. Please review and let me know if it stands worthy of posting in tutorials.

You've read the tutorial but you still can't seem to get a grasp on what exactly to use Chained dispatching for.

Chained is just another method of method/url dispatching that Catalyst allows you to use. Chained, however, allows you to chain together methods that need to share information across requests....

Say you want to construct a url that looks something like this: http://www.yourhost.com/item/1/view. Normally, you'd have to go through a bunch of parsing involving $ENV{'PATH_PART'} $ENV{'PATH_INFO}, which is ugly, and hackish. You can do it like this with Chained:

CaptureArgs tells Chained to capture one argument directly after the path part.

Now, let's finish the chain so we can have a working URL.

## the next part is to link the end point to the chain
## thisis done by passing the name of the base chain method to Chaine+d for this method
sub view : Chained('base') PathPart('view') Args(0) {
my ($self, $c) = @_;
my $item = $c->stash->{item};
$c->stash(
template => 'item/view.tt2',
item => $item,
);
}

This method is fairly self explanatory, but just to make sure, we'll go ahead and go over it.

As in the comments, Chained is passed the name of the base point of the chain, which in this case is 'base'. We determine the path part with PathPart once again, which can be noted that it doesn't have to match the current method's name. The one different attribute is the Args(0) attribute. Args tells Chained that the end of the chain has been reached, thus giving you a usable URL at this point. You can specify arguments to be passed in Args(), and they can be accessed via the @_ variable, like $self and $c.

To recap, this gives us a url like http://www.yourdomain.com/item/itemid/view. You can expand this for CRUD actions so you can have URLs like the above, as well as something like /item/create. Here is some example code:

Chained attributes are like crack. Once you grok them and start using them you can't stop. They simplify code so much.

I think you should stress what you have accomplished with your chained handlers more. Make it clear that the nbenefit is access to the entry object in all methods chained from blog without having to do the work. You imply it, but don't come out and say it. In other words you have a great magic trick but are missing the Ta-Da!

-pete
"Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere."

Chained attributes are like crack. Once you grok them and start using them you can't stop. They simplify code so much.

I understand what chained attributes do. And Catalyst was a lot of fun to work with when it first came out.
I would like to offer my viewpoint on solving the same problem.
Personally, if you read what dhoss says chained attributes are for:

Chained, however, allows you to chain together methods that need to share information across requests....

Basically, in OO terms, what he is saying is that he has a sequence of methods that belong in the same class because they consume the same data.
And if you look at the implementation:

The big difference is that I used clean, standard class-based OO to create a base class and then allowed the derived class to share/refine behavior as needed.

I personally dont like learning things like Catalyst and Template Toolkit. In my eyes, they are attempts to take what any OO Perl programmer can do himself and come up with syntactic trickery and shortcuts to make it easier for those who lack said sophistication.

Just give me Moose, CGI::Prototype and HTML::Seamstress and the tried and true methods of OO programming which work in and out of Perl anyday over language-specific syntax games like this.

But of course, we all have our preferences and I'm sure many people are getting great mileage out of Catalyst and Template, so more power to them!

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)